Friday, December 2, 2005

David Irving's Reality Check

Irving has long maintained a website on which he posts many things including his correspondence, diaries, and diatribes against the enemies of free speech [in his world this generally means the Jewish community]. A few days ago, friends of mine, who went on the site to see if anyone had posted anything regarding his arrest, discovered that it is now password protected.

I wonder if someone explained to Irving that he cannot maintain he has changed his mind when all the evidence to the contrary is sitting on his web site.

According to his lawyer, he has changed his mind regarding the gas chambers as a result of a visit he made to Moscow where he saw "new" evidence. The problem for Irving is that he was in Moscow in the 1990s. During the trial, which was in 2000, he consistently argued that gas chambers were an impossibility. Since the trial he has repeated his disbelief about gas chambers. As I noted on November 25th, he was vigorously arguing that gas chambers were impossible as late as two months ago.

Maybe, at long last, he has come to realize he cannot have it both ways, i.e. say one thing when it is convenient to do so and something else when it is not convenient to maintain his first position. Or maybe his lawyer has explained to him that he will have a hard time convincing an Austrian court of his newfound position with all this information readily available on his website.